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He has always cherished his Welsh roots and bought up Castell Cidwm in the foothills of Snowdon as part of his many investments, with plans for a tourism and training development that could create 25 jobs.

But he has voiced concerns that the region is still not seen as being ‘investment friendly’ which he believes could prevent North Wales from reaching its full potential.

He said: “I am Welsh and my dream as a boy was playing fly half for Wales but I have lived away and don’t sound Welsh and I am often made to feel like an outsider when I am looking to invest in the region.

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“In Manchester we know who we are dealing with but it is not the same in Wales, it is hard to build up those relationships you need.

“In Wales we have been waiting five years to get the project at Castell Cidwm started.

“We have £5m waiting to invest but the message we are getting is that the door is closed on what we want to do.

Planned training centre Lawrence Jones wants to build in Snowdonia

“Investment is all about stepping stones. If we find the area investment friendly then you look to do more and larger projects.

“In Manchester we started small and built up to the size of company we have now.

“But in North Wales I can’t see this happening at the moment.

“I have previously looked at the Ferodo site(Caernarfon) but because of my experience here do we really want to look at investing say £100m in a site like this when someone can turn around and say ‘you can’t do this, you can’t do that’.

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“Our heritage and our culture is important and I want to develop things that do not harm that and the surrounding area but we have to have progress, that is holding back the economy of North Wales.

“There needs to be people we can speak to, people we can do business with.”

When Lawrence, 48, a talented musician, left North Wales as a 16-year-old he started out in Manchester playing the piano in restaurants and a cinema and built this up into a business where he was hiring out performers to venues all over the city.

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“I was living in a part of Salford that was the most densely populated place in Europe at the time, it was different to Denbigh where you could escape to the hills when you needed a break.”

He survived and thrived in the city and after a number of years he sold the business to Granada. While pondering his next business opportunity he went to live in New York with a friend who had moved to the US from Denbigh.

He said: “I did nothing but paint in Central Park or skateboard, play chess, but in some ways the pressure was there.

“I was 30 and I felt under pressure to get my next business move right, to go in the right direction.

“My last business had been niche to the music industry and not made my fortune, I wanted the next to be something I could sell to everyone.”

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He said: “The lists are surreal really and also it is based on the value of the business.

“I think people think I have £300m sitting in my bank account, I wish I had!

“The money is in the businesses and we have no intention of selling the businesses, with UK Fast we want to turn it into a billion pound business.

“I think we are brought up to worry about rankings so these lists play into that but I don’t really want people to judge me on my value, I would rather people judge me on the things we do for charity and for society. That is important to me, to help give other people opportunities.”